Recognising the 'little perpetrator' in each of us: Complicity, responsibility and translation/interpreting in institutional contexts in multilingual South Africa

摘要

A key metaphor in exploring the ideology of translation and the position of the translator or interpreter is a spatial one, that of being 'in between', a detached onlooker located somewhere, in time and space, between source and target listener or reader. As modern trained translators and interpreters, we prefer the master narrative of ourselves as impartial professionals, following a defined code of ethics and rising above the mire of self-doubt. But how do institutional factors interact with the process and product of translation and interpreting in specific organisations or establishments? Interpreters and translators are intimately involved in the events they are assigned to interpret or translate and, contrary to the narratives of professional codes of ethics, are not simply professionals working in that space 'in-between' cultures, untouched by events. In this article I discuss the collapse of apartheid ('separateness') or enforced racial separation, itself a spatial metaphor, which underpins the formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This provides a basis for an exploration of the role of interpreting in post-apartheid South African institutional contexts. I argue that, for the translator, the legacy of the obsession of apartheid with separateness means that the notion of between cannot be neutral and gives rise to competing discourses of joinedness and complicity. The notion of complicity may be applied, not only to important political figures, but also to the so-called 'little perpetrators', the institutional functionaries in the system. In multilingual South Africa, where language, power and identity are so intertwined, it is important to trace the role played by translators and interpreters in meaning-making and to examine the extent to which they may be complicit in far larger ideological constructs than those of which they may be consciously aware.